Eva and Pal Vari

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This photo was taken right after my wedding in 1945 in Miskolc. I am on the right and my husband Pal Vari, then still Weitzenfeld, on the left.

When the war was over and I went back to Miskolc - I went there only because someone told me that my father had arrived home in Miskolc - a day or two after I arrived, I had to go shopping to buy myself some clothes. I met my husband when I went shopping. They had a textile shop right in the center of town in the Weinich Court, a big shop with double portals. And a gentleman was standing there. They were still called Weitzenfeld then. The girls were born with that name, if I recall we got the papers in Pest with our Magyarized names. We became Vari.

In my husband's family there were three boys and three girls, and everyone Magyarized differently. He was born in Miskolc in 1906. He became a merchant. His was a well-to-do family. They married off the boys and girls. Pali was very well trained, he helped his parents in the shop, so that when they were no more he would inherit it. His wife and 12 year-old son were deported. They did not return. His parents didn't either, so he was alone.

One of his siblings, who before Pali came home, was a cloth merchant in Pest. He had two children, they moved down to Miskolc, moved into his parents' apartment and were very surprised when Pali turned up. And they said that if Pali was already there, then they should run the business together. Then the third brother, Gyuszi, who was also in cloth in Pest, decided he would come in on it too. And he entered the business, so that when I went into the shop I was like some sort of noble stranger.

When we got married I was twenty and he was forty. But he was very handsome, a fine figure of a man, and very gentle. My parents wanted nothing to do with it. They always said that he was too old. I had as many suitors as stars in the sky. The Jewish boys, who survived, came home with nothing, no families left. I was a striking girl. I could have had another, but I wanted this one, I wanted a calm, balanced life after the deportations. If I remember we got married that December. We had a Jewish wedding, because as his wife's body had not been found we couldn't have a civil one. And then the civil ceremony took place a year later.